Tag You’re It! Instagram’s New Feature

Yesterday, Instagram introduced “Photos of You” – a feature where users can tag other users (and brands) in their photos. Read about it here:

“There will now be a Photos of You section on your profile. When someone adds you to a photo, you’ll receive a notification and the photo will appear in your Photos of You. Want to make sure you like the photo first? No problem: you can easily adjust your settings so nothing appears on your profile until you approve it. Before your Photos of You section is visible to other people, you’ll have until May 16th to play around and get used to the feature. You can find more information about how Photos of You works and how to control your visibility at help.instagram.com.”

Worried about spam, your privacy or unflattering pictures in general? Selecting the option above allows you to review your tags before they appear in your profile. You can also block users to prevent them from tagging or following your account and also report inappropriate pictures.

While “Photos of You” is new to Instagram, it works much like the photo tagging feature on Facebook.

Here are some ways that it can be beneficial for businesses:

– Hashtags: Tags can be used in conjunction with hashtags, which will give your business more exposure to other customers who are mentioning/tagging your brand.

– Location: Tagging is also helpful when users add your business location to their photo. Talk about a brand booster!

– Advertisements via endorsements in the future? This isn’t just a possibility for big brands or celebrities. For example, if your business runs a contest where Followers are tagged, they can allow that picture to be posted directly into their photostream where it can be seen by their followers.

– Encourage more fan engagement by curating the content. Brand engagement on Pinterest was recently considered to be a “fail” because 70% of brand engagement is found to be user-generated. Take that as a lesson to grow your brand by communicating and reciprocating.

Let us know what you think about Instagram’s new tagging feature on Facebook.